After breakfast on Monday we caught a taxi into the city centre. We wandered around the city centre, stopping at a coffee shop for an excellent coffee. The city was very busy and there were hardly any tourists visible but it felt reasonably safe. The ubiquitous chicken shops were labelled as Fish & Chips! We bought tickets for the impressive looking Kenya Archives building and enjoyed the mix of sculpture, art and history. There were good displays of masks, weapons and artefacts from all over Africa showing how the tribes/regions all had their slightly different cultures. There was also excellent Swahili metalwork with its Indo Arabic style eg the copper and brass coffee pots and engraved trays. Furniture and carving in wood, especially ebony, and stone was impressive. Afterwards, we caught a taxi back to Wildebeest Camp. We updated our diary in the garden and admired the many birds, giant tortoises and a couple of Sykes monkeys who dropped in to check out the rubbish.
At breakfast on Tuesday, we chatted with Andy from the UK. Andy has been visiting Kenya regularly for the last five years and was involved in the establishment of a school in Kitale (West Kenya). He made a couple of calls on his mobile and organised for Victor who runs a school in the nearby slum of Kibera to take us on a day trip tomorrow to visit the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, the KWS Orphanage, the Giraffe Centre and the school in Kibera. After breakfast we caught a taxi to the recently renovated Nairobi National Musuem. The museum housed an anthropology display showing man's evolutions through fossil finds of skulls and skeletons, a display of stuffed mammals, tribal displays of masks, spears, beadwork, beaded ceremonial attire and jewellery, an extensive display of stuffed birds, decorated gourds, an elaborately carved ivory horn, paintings and photographs. The museum was really well set out and we spent a pleasant few hours browsing through the well labelled displays. We had a late lunch at the nearby Savanna Coffee Lounge. We both had salads because we knew that we were going to meet Janet and Wendy (Keith's cousins) at Carnivores Restaurant for dinner. After lunch, we had a look around at the curio shops in the museum complex and then we caught a taxi back to the camp. The traffic was really bad so the taxi driver took us back a different way. We drove through the Nairobi suburbs which were almost first world, with large apartment complexes and big houses. The high fences and walls topped with razor wire and CCTV cameras were a dead giveaway.
Back at the camp we had a shower and then caught a taxi to Carnivores. We got there early so we had a walk around the curio shops and talked to the guy who was playing the drums outside the shops. We ordered a bottle of Chilean wine and had a look around the restaurant and took photos of the cooking area where the cooks were roasting large cuts of meat on spits over charcoal grills. Janet and Wendy turned up half an hour later with their friends Anna and Sarah and then we began feasting in earnest. After a spicy courgette soup to start, a waiter put a Lazy Susan on the table with condiments on the top level and a selection of salads on the bottom level. They brought out heated plates and gave us a potato each and then waiters began stopping by with large skewers of meat which they sliced off on to our plates. We had a choice of chicken, pork, crocodile, ostrich, lamb, beef, pork spare ribs, ostrich meatballs, lamb's liver, chicken liver, turkey and bull's testicles. There was a choice of about six desserts and we finally chose ice cream and chocolate gateaux to have with a cup of tea. After dinner we got a lift back to the camp with Janet, Wendy, Anna and Sarah.
After breakfast on Wednesday Victor picked us up in the blue Soweto Academy minibus and we drove to the Kenya Wildlife Service Orphanage. We drove there on a bumpy dirt road that cut through the edge of Kibera – one of the world's biggest slums. The road was lined with corrugated iron shacks and there was a fetid ditch filled with rubbish on both sides. We saw some unaccompanied small children crossing the street in front of us. Victor told us that the slum children learn to fend for themselves at a very young age and they look after other younger children, which is why they felt ready to have their own children when they were in their teens.
Our visit to the KWS Orphanage was really rewarding. We saw warthogs, a spot nosed monkey, Patas monkeys, Sykes monkeys, vervet monkeys, cheetahs, leopards, caracals, serval cat, lionesses, a young male lion, silver-backed jackals, spotted hyena, vulturine guinea fowl, crested guinea fowl, crowned crane, African grey parrots, ostrich and white tailed mongoose. We drove to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust where we spent an hour watching the orphaned baby elephants being hand-fed from large bottles and frolicking in the mud and dust. We walked around the pens and saw a couple of large rhinos. After that we went to the Giraffe Centre in Langata. We climbed up the stairs to the second floor of a rondavel where we collected a handful of pellets to feed three eager giraffe whose heads were at the perfect height. One of them was head-butting people to get their attention. By this time it was quite late and we all ready for lunch. Victor drove us across town to the Small Village Restaurant & Bar which served Ethiopian food. We ordered a mixed platter of rice pancake, topped with salad, vegetables, beans, pureed lentils, two kinds of spiced mince, three kinds of spicy beef strips, beetroot chips and potato chips. We also had a layered fruit juice – papaya, avocado, passionfruit and watermelon. Everybody really enjoyed the meal which we ate with our hands.
Victor drove us back to Kibera after that. Kibera was a five kilometre stretch of land around a dank river which housed 2 million people. We drove past lots of little shops, shacks, toilets (which cost KES 3), water taps (KES 5), makeshift cinemas (KES 10), butchers, mosques, hair salons and mobile phone shops. Apparently everything in the slum costs money. A lot of residents could not afford the KES 3 to use the toilet so they resorted to "aerial toilets". This involved defecating into a plastic bag and then throwing the bag into the street at night. We noticed that a lot of the shacks had makeshift antennae on the roof. Victor told us that this was so that the residents could watch the news on TV or listen to the radio. Apparently they were very interested in the news because they were constantly hoping that that government would make some changes which would improve their living conditions.
Our first stop was the primary school that he ran. The "playground" was very uneven and steep with views of the slum on the opposite slope. We looked in on a class in session, talked to the children and then went to his office to sign the Visitors Book. Then we drove through the slum to the Soweto Academy. We met the principal Johnstone first and looked in on a class. Then Victor showed us the projects that the school was running to raise additional funds. They had some pigs, cows, chickens, and a water bottling plant. Right next door to the school through a gate in the corrugated iron fence was a clinic. Just before we left, we climbed up on to the roof of the school where we got some panoramic views of Kibera including a couple of bridges over the stinking river. We drove back to Wildebeest Camp via the Sailing Club which was once on a dam but the dam was now filled with water hyacinth due to the pollution from Kibera. The man at the sailing club told us that the last time anybody sailed was 1997!
On Thursday we had to pack up and check out. We spent a lazy day walking around the local area, surfing the net and organising a hair cut for Keith. Then we were off to the airport in the taxi with relatively little traffic and our last sight of Nairobi by night. Everything went smoothly at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport with short lines and fairly tight security. We boarded the British Airways flight and watched Avatar before a poor sleep interrupted by screaming babies which didn't bother us much with our noise cancelling ear phones.
We arrived at Heathrow Terminal 5 at 5.30am on Friday and found the BA lounge which was fantastic. We sat in the lounge for a couple of hours eating breakfast, reading the paper and checking our emails, while waiting for our flight to Edinburgh. The flight to Edinburgh was mercifully short - only an hour – and after collecting our luggage and taking some money out, we went to the Tourist Information Office to see if there was any accommodation left in Edinburgh. Jackie at the Tourist Information Office was really helpful and spent a good hour searching her system and calling hostels, B&B's and hotels for us with no luck - everything was booked out because of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. As a last resort, she called the Airport Travelodge and thankfully they had a double room available for the next couple of nights! After that, we walked to the car rental centre and organised a rental car to be collected on our departure from Edinburgh. It was 1.00 pm before we were able to catch a bus to the hotel. We checked in, had a shower and a cup of tea and then caught a bus into the city centre. After catching buses in Africa, the Scottish bus was pure luxury. We didn't have to wait until it was full before we left and it was clean, new and modern with bright tartan seats.
We fell in love with Edinburgh straight away. The temperature was in the high teens and the sun was shining making for a pleasant walk around town. We strolled around the city centre admiring the lush green flower-filled parks, the beautiful stone buildings and churches with Edinburgh castle providing a dramatic backdrop. We went to Sainsbury's to buy a late picnic lunch of chicken and salad followed by blackberries and raspberries for dessert, which we ate sitting in a park. After buying the Scotland and Ireland Lonely Planets, we walked along Princes Street watching the street entertainers, browsing the street stalls and exploring some interesting-looking side streets before catching the bus back to the Travelodge. It was after 7.00 pm by the time we got home and we couldn't believe how late it was because the sun was still out!
We walked to the bus stop on Saturday morning and caught a bus into town. We got off the bus at Princes Street and walked along Princes Street and up the hill towards Edinburgh Castle. We arrived there just before it opened and the area in front of the entrance was crowded with tourists. The entrance gate was flanked by statues of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce. The Lonely Planet walking tour of Edinburgh began at Castlehill – the start of the Royal Mile. We paid a quick visit to a very touristy "tartan-weaving mill" (really a shop) to have a look for the Erskine (Keith's maternal grandparents) and MacGregor (Keith's middle name) tartans and then began the walk. The walk led us to some interesting cobbled alleyways and side-streets along the Royal Mile where we climbed up and down some steep sets of stairs and closes.
About half way through the walk, we went to the Quaker's Tea Room where we ordered a cup of Earl Grey tea. Our tea had just arrived when we were invited upstairs to watch Tibetan monks destroying a sand mandala (colourful sand sculpture) that they had painstakingly created over a couple of weeks. Seven Tibetan monks dressed in deep red and saffron coloured robes performed the ceremony. They chanted and played cymbals, horns, bells and a drum for fifteen minutes before they destroyed the sculpture. After we finished our tea we browsed though the stalls at a street market before finishing the walking tour.
After lunch we walked through Princes Street Gardens past the Scott Monument to the National Gallery of Scotland. The National Gallery was a classical building with Ionic columns housing an extensive collection of European and Scottish art. We spent a couple of hours there – but we only had time to visit the ground floor galleries (Italian, German, French, Dutch and Flemish artists) and the basement galleries (Scottish artists). We left when the gallery closed at 5.00 pm and decided to walk along the route taken by the sightseeing tour buses. We walked along Regent Road and paid a visit to the Burns Monument and the Calton Cemetery. After cutting through Regent Park we found ourselves in front of Holyroodhouse Palace. We walked back towards the centre of town past the Scottish Parliament to "Monster Mash", a cafe which was highly recommended by the Lonely Planet. The cafe was full and we had to queue for ten minutes for a table. The food was classic British style and very large portions. We had steak pie with mash and sausages with mash and couldn't quite finish our meals. After dinner we walked to the bus stop and caught the bus back to the Travelodge.
We were so lucky with the rain today. It rained while we were in the restaurant, but when we left to walk to the bus stop, it stopped. It also rained when we were on the bus, but it had stopped by the time we got off the bus.
On Sunday morning, we packed up, checked out and walked to the bus stop to catch the bus to the airport. At the airport, we went to the car rental centre to collect our rental car – a new silver Peugot 207 with less than 5,000 miles on the clock. It was wonderful to have our own wheels again!
We drove to the village of Roslin – seven miles south of Edinburgh – to visit the Rosslyn Chapel, immortalised in Dan Brown's novel "The Da Vinci Code". We arrived there one hour before it was open to the public, so we went for a walk down a steep lane by the side of chapel past the Roslin Cemetery. At the foot of the lane, we came across the remains of the Rosslyn Castle. Only the exterior sandstone walls remained. We carried on walking down the hill along a damp mossy forest path which led us back up the hill to the rear of the chapel. Back at the chapel, we paid our entry fee and went in. The chapel deserved its title of Scotland's most beautiful and enigmatic church. The interior was intricately carved with literally hundreds of flowers, vines, angels, scenes, biblical and pagan figures. Some figures had associations with the Freemasons and the Knights Templar. Mysteriously, there were carvings of maize – which were difficult to explain since the chapel predated Columbus' discovery of the Americas. After walking around the chapel reading the helpful information boards which detailed the chapel's history and explained some of the more significant carvings, we sat and listened to a talk/presentation by one of the staff members. We walked downstairs to the crypt before heading off for lunch.
Then we headed north. We drove across the Forth Road Bridge and up the coast on the Fife Tourist Trail. The scenery was really beautiful – rolling green pastures and yellow wheat fields on our left with the North Sea coast on our right. We drove through a number of fishing villages before we decided to stay at Anstruther. We parked our car and walked along the main road to look for somewhere to stay. Most of the B&B's had no vacancies – but we finally found a lovely room at The Waterfront Restaurant. After parking the car and checking in, we went to "The Wee Chippy" for dinner.
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